Adventures in genderbending, edited by “two butches and a barracuda femme.” “What is butch? Sexual power of a kind that no woman is supposed to have… A fearless collection of stories and art, essays and interviews by butches (and the women who love them).” Or, says one dyke daddy, “I’m proud of my tits and I want people to look at them… FUCK YOU!” GR

Publisher: Cleis
Paperback: 232 pages
Illustrated

Everything you always wanted to know about homosex in Guadalajara. Anthropological techniques are used to study Mexican male-to-male courtship, complete with descriptions of the various acts favored by Mexican gays based on direct observation. The resulting data almost read like a novel, albeit with plenty of social-science terms and references among the field notes. Also gay, the author was able to participate in much of the sex he outlines with explicit detail. Grants and other funding for his life’s work allowed him to continue his research (and the participatory sex) in Guadalajara for 29 years—and it’s still ongoing.
Carrier also profiles four extraordinary men with the love and care of a doting mom. He eloquently manhandles 18-year-olds, both figuratively and literally. He describes hot bathhouse and movie-theater scenes, and shares the most intimate details of tender adolescent love stories. The hottest observations, and clearly Dr. Carrier’s favorites, are when he meets young, queeny respondents, who then throw him their leftovers. We learn of Eric, who thought that anal sex was safest because “after having sex all the semen comes out when you take a shit.” Poor José leaves his rich German lover in New York for hunky 18-year-old Juan back in Guadalajara. And, the warm and wonderful Arturo dies from AIDS. Break out a box of tissues and a fire extinguisher for this one. GE

Publisher: Columbia University
Paperback: 231 pages

“A stroke here, a pat there, a quick nuzzle in that gorgeous fur… though: that one spot, somewhere down below, generally remains untouched… “ But what about Beauty and the Beast? Leda and the Swan? King Kong and Fay Wray? Didn’t they do the wild thing? A Dutch biologist traces our “interspecies love affair” with animals in art and popular culture, and shows how social taboos are slighted when it comes to our furry friends. “So we see that love takes ever new and unexpected forms. Those who are surprised by this are surprised about themselves. And rightly so, since no one will ever be able to explain the source of that feeling that comes from deep inside when you look a woman or a man or a cat or a rabbit in the eyes and say, ‘I love you.’” GR

Publisher: Verso
Hardback: 276 pages
Illustrated

If an army marches on its stomach, then this coffee-table ode to the enamel arts shows that a civilization progresses on its dental work. Dentistry is an ancient practice—Mayan skulls of the 9th century show inlays of jade and turquoise, and molars bound together with gold wire have been excavated from Old Kingdom sites in Egypt. The frontspiece of a lost Arabic manuscript of the 13th century shows a dentist caring for a woman with a toothache. He is prescribing a medicinal plant growing between them as a remedy for relief. The barber to the King of Scotland in 1503 had simple dental care to the King’s court, offering hot irons on a tooth for pain and cosmetic tooth filing. By the 1880s, deluxe denture bases could be designed with a palate of swagged gold-and-porcelain teeth set in Vulcanite. At the same time, newly established American dental schools didn’t admit women. America’s first female dentist was Emeline Roberts, who began pulling teeth alongside her husband in 1859. She was eventually elected to membership in the Connecticut State Dental Society—34 years after she first began her practice. GR

Publisher: Abrams
Hardback: 320 pages
Illustrated

“Week by week, stage by stage, The Developing Human shows you how organs and systems are formed and develop, why and when abnormalities occur and what vital roles are assumed by the placenta and fetal membranes.” Photo illustrations depict such abnormalities as a double thumb, cleft foot, thalidomide babies, missing spinal cord, skull malformations, hermaphroditism, conjoint (Siamese) twins, extra nipples and other congenital oddities.

Publisher: W.B. Saunders
Paperback: 493 pages
Illustrated

Medical moulage is defined as “a wax reproduction of pathologic changes of the body.” While no longer the state of the art in medical education, the moulage pieces reproduced in deluxe color in Diseases in Wax, like the daguerreotype images in the Burns Archive’s Masterpieces of Medical Photography, become an ambiguously sumptuous feast of bodily decay and human misery. Author Thomas Schnalke has not only collected the finest examples of this now lost art but also put together a thoroughly researched history of the field from its earliest beginnings in 17th-century Italy, including biographies of its leading artists. With 331 color reproductions of moulages such as “Untreated tertiary syphilis of the skin and facial bones of a mountain dweller” by Carl Henning, Vienna, 1910, illustrations from such museums as the Elektropathologisches Museum (devoted strictly to electrical burns) where medical moulages can be viewed, and step-by-step demonstrations of moulaging techniques, Diseases in Wax is truly one of the great accomplishments of medical publishing. SS

Publisher: Quintessence
Hardback: 226 pages
Illustrated

A well-written and highly entertaining collection of erotica which shares a common bond of dominance and submission. While it is not specific to a particular gender orientation, the high quality of the writing makes this a compelling read for all comers. It is not about incest or child abuse, but it does raise a lot of questions for the reader who might proclaim, “That’s not my cup of tea.” The editor explains it the best. “Daddy has gotten to be so popular that he threatens to eclipse Master as an honorific… Daddy fantasies sometimes function as a kind of SM-lite. A daddy is more accessible, flexible, and loving than a master or a sadist. A daddy-boy or daddy-girl scene is more likely to include genital sex than an SM scene. And there is less codification of the daddy role.” With 18 writers to select from, this book really does offer something for everyone. The introductory essay is one of the most intelligent essays on gender, family and role playing ever set in type. And for those who would balk at the bad name that such a book might give to Log Cabin types, Califia reminds us: “Books like this one make the rest of gay literature safer, because they push the edges and enlarge the territory of what can be said, thought about and done.” SA

Publisher: Alyson
Paperback: 240 pages

Fashion photographer Kloster’s portfolio of mostly dominant women, with lots of accessories (starting from the top and working down): gas masks, uniforms, rubber, leather corsets, hip boots, stiletto heels, strap-ons. Mostly submissive men being tortured with (starting from the top and working down): suspension, hoods, restraint, whips, pinching. Sections on shoe licking and infantilism. Kloster’s photos have a self-consciously staged look, rather than the heady playfulness of the Klaw/Page pictures, the bewildering eccentricity of Elmer Batters or Eric Kroll, or the scary autism of ritualist amateur photos. RP

Publisher: Taschen
Hardback: 340 pages
Illustrated

Explores our dangerous dependence on a force of nature we don’t really understand. “Natural electricity is generally a beneficent force, controlled as it is by magnetism. But the electricity that now pulses through our cables in our homes, offices and factories, beneath our feet and above our heads, has been unleashed from its magnetic bonds; even the electrical industries acknowledge that prolonged exposure is harmful. In our everyday lives it can make us ill; we can develop severe allergies to it. And in its purest, strongest form, in the computer world, it can influence our minds, alter our characters, and markedly affect our health—already physicians have recognized a painful and dangerous physical syndrome that attends intense and protracted work with a computer… And something even more threatening may happen: a change in consciousness and character that has already been observed may come to affect an important segment of humanity.” GR

Publisher: New Amsterdam
Hardback: 287 pages

Technology may be developing a little too quickly for its own good. The environmental consequences of nuclear power, fossil fuel, global warming and acid rain are being demonstrated by scientists, as we go from “technology worship to global concern.” Certain side effects of electricity are also gaining some attention. During the past few years much research has been done on the effects of weak electromagnetic energy fields on cells and organisms. This is the same kind of electromagnetism that comes from many daily-used household items as well as in power lines overhead. This book focuses on the question: Is there an association between electromagnetic fields and human health? It also presents the background needed to understand the different dimensions of this complex question. The answers are still not clear and are being studied and debated continually. Computer monitors, electric blankets and cellular phones, among other devices have become suspect. DW

Publisher: New Star
Paperback: 207 pages